Day: June 14, 2009

[Bill2009] has made some nice progress on a control panel for his motorcycle over at the arduino.cc forums. It can show speed, tachometer readings for the wheel and engine, as well as indicate the current gear. He reads the square wave coming off of his tachometer input and pulses from a reed switch mounted on the wheel to calculate all this. To top it all off he can monitor the data via a Bluetooth module attached to the board, which is much better than trying to balance a laptop on your knees while cruising down the highway. He is working on getting the size down so that he can mount the whole assembly inside of his motorcycle. He also plans to add new software features like wind resistance calculations and0 to 60mph timing.

The Camera Axe is an open source system for doing high speed camera triggering. You know all those pictures people get of balloons popping or drops of water in mid splash? This is how they do it. The system has light sensors and sound sensors to help get the timing just right. It can trigger your camera and the flash to capture images at just the right moment. There are a lot of picture examples on the site as well as a full schematic and parts list. Not too bad for roughly $100.

There aren’t many details, or really any at all here. This was just too fun not to post. Here are two cans strung together, just like when you were a kid. However, when you talk into one the sound is then converted and transmitted to the other via fiber optic cable. Looking at the pictures, it seems that it is only one way though.